10 minutes build time for the Spotify app - I don't do mobile development - is that a long time? I've only briefly touched a point of sale iOS app and compiling took maybe 30 seconds.
Nah it’s not. Most big tech companies optimize for having multiple devs be able to work simultaneously on different projects, which usually is orthogonal to build time (lots of potentially redundant code, lots of libraries that are split up). Is it slow for a single dev project? 100%, but it’s pretty reasonable for a larger company. Last I heard FB’s app took like 30+ minutes to cold start build.
Disclosure: Work on mobile infrastructure at Spotify.
A lot of the Spotify app isn't perhaps visible at a first glance. Besides the key features I'm sure you're already familiar with, there is also an extensive number of 3rd party integrations (cars, wearables, voice, social sharing etc).
The app as a whole is 1-2M LOC Objective-C & Swift.
Is it really just a music player? All it does is fetch some binary blob in some audio format and play it?
I feel this is another Dropbox moment [1] on Hacker News where the hyper-smart ones here dismiss a whole technology/company on their most simplistic assumptions about what the product actually is doing.
I see this sentiment a lot, but it's always worked perfectly for me. The device connection is very impressive, and it even supports MPRIS on Linux.
I find it even easier to use than Netflix (and there's no DRM limitations like Netflix). The only thing I dislike are the changes to the UI due to adding podcasts now, and how many clicks it can take to find a specific older, unpopular album in an artist's discography.
But just the fact that it supports Linux and has all the music I listen to, really makes it a no-brainer in terms of maintaining a subscription.
